


Good Joke

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Am I Alone Now, Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Hilbert's Tragic Backstory, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Volgograd Meltdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14199000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: "Three men are on a deserted island. Man number one and man number two go away. Man number three says, I do not want to be alone. Good joke. Everybody laugh. Everybody laugh."Just a little backstory headcanon I posted on tumblr a while ago about where Hilbert heard the joke from "Am I Alone Now?"





	Good Joke

**Author's Note:**

> here's the original post: https://lovelyleonard.tumblr.com/post/170887807592/affectbreathe-in-am-i-alone-now-hilbert-tells
> 
> I literally am posting this so I can find it more easily in the future, my ao3 is much less cluttered and better organized than my tumblr.

Volgograd is dying. Volgograd has been dying for as long as Dmitri can remember. He was four when the meltdown occurred, five when those around him began to cough, six when his mother took to her bed. By the time he was nine Olga was all the family he had left.

And it hasn’t stopped. The orphanage closes- there aren’t enough people left to run it. The hospital stays open, but it’s little more than a place people go to die without the funding to provide medicine.

The city is emptying. There are bodies left on the corners of streets and on the banks of the river. One day there is a riot outside the courthouse when an important man comes from the government to visit their city. People shout. Some throw things. The man does not come back. They never do.

Dmitri and Olga just barely survive, scraping by day to day on stolen or scavenged food and huddling under eaves to escape the rain. Olga holds Dmitri as he sleeps to keep out the worst of the cold, her three years over him all she needs to be the adult. Sometimes they see others like themselves, parentless children, scrambling through the back alleys, looking through garbage or breaking into abandoned buildings. As fall turns to winter, they grow to recognize and then to know the others. They let themselves into empty homes and take over deserted areas, a city of the dead and the doomed.

There are always people making plans to escape. There are always people leaving. Dmitri cannot imagine a world outside this city, but anywhere must be better than here. Stories travel through their midst of the struggle to find work, to find shelter, to simply traverse the distance from Volgograd to the next nearest town. No trains come to Volgograd anymore, no buses. They couldn’t drive a car out even if Olga were tall enough to reach the pedals. The roads are blocked. There is a boy a few years older than Olga. He tells her he wants her to go with him when he tries to leave in the spring. He smiles too much.

Volgograd is dying. Volgograd has always been dying. Dmitri grows up amidst a city crumbling around him, listening to the words of other frightened children and adolescents, forced to become adults before their time. There is a joke they like to tell.  _Three men are on deserted island. Have been there for months, starving, desperate, afraid. Then, one day, one of them finds magic lamp._

Olga is the one who finds the snowshoes. A pair for her, a pair for her brother. It is too cold to travel, but Olga is afraid of the boy with the smile, and they bundle themselves into coats several sizes too large and begin to walk. It will take them days to reach the next town, but anything is better than what they leave behind.

They make it a short distance beyond the edge of the city before night falls. It is too cold to stop and too cold to go on. Olga collapses in the snow and Dmitri half-guides, half-carries her back into the city. They cannot escape.

They try again with the snowshoes, and then again in the spring with a pair of stolen bicycles. The road ends in a sharp drop and a sign warning them that the bridge has been demolished. 

Everyone is sick, but Olga seems to be getting sicker. Dmitri spends hours sifting through abandoned buildings looking for some way to help her. He goes to the hospital and begs and pleads the tired, weary doctor there for something to give her. The doctor ushers Dmitri out the door and he stands on the front stoop, thinking that if he were the doctor he would have fixed this by now. If  _he_ were the doctor he’d save Olga, and their parents and the older brothers and sisters he doesn’t remember, and all the others as well. When he goes back to them they’re telling the same old joke. They cannot escape, but at least they have each other.

Dmitri Volodin watches as the boys around him grow into men, as his sister becomes a woman, the only things that change in this static place. People who still meet to complain about outside intervention are scoffed at. There is nobody coming to help. Volgograd has been left to die, and they have been left to die with it. People leave, and for their own sake Dmitri hopes they don’t come back. 

_Three men are on a deserted island. Man number one and man number two go away. Man number three says, I do not want to be alone. Good joke. Everybody laugh. Everybody laugh._

_Is anyone laughing now?_


End file.
